Divorce doesn’t make you a bad dad

DIVORCE and broken homes used to be taboo and avoided at all costs. But Jesse Fink explains how his marriage breakdown could’ve been the best thing for his daughter.

JESSE FINK

Sunday StyleAugust 10, 201511:50am

Jesse Fink, author of The Youngs, The Brothers Who Built AC/DC Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied

I DIDN’T design my life to end up like this, but the unexpected can sometimes be the best thing that ever happens to us.

When I married in my mid-twenties, I honestly intended to carry through on the vows I made to the woman who would leave me unexpectedly 10 years later. You don’t get much of a choice about it when your wife doesn’t love you any more and finds someone to replace you.

How do you explain these things to a strawberry-blonde four-year-old girl in pink fairy wings holding a magic wand? You don’t. You just smile, buy her an ice-cream and tell her mummy and daddy don’t live together now. The rest you just make up along the way.

Nothing prepares you for being a single parent and no one can know how hard it really is – mentally, emotionally and financially – until it happens to them.

I’ve been called a “bad father”, but I prefer to think of myself as a “cool dad”. When I got divorced back in 2008, I wanted to get as far away as I could from my old life in the suburbs of Sydney’s inner west. But because of a shared-custody arrangement with my ex, I had to stay in the city, even though I could have moved to a log cabin in the Yukon and never looked back.

Instead I moved into a studio apartment in the inner city. There was barely enough space to swing a cat, but in that tiny room I raised my daughter. I fed her. I taught her. I bought her toys, books, drawing pads and Textas. I stroked her hair when she went to sleep. To get air, we’d go for long walks through the neighbourhood, encountering homeless people, criminals, drug addicts, streetwalkers, the mentally ill and a few dangerously intoxicated thugs.

No place to raise a girl.

In a tiny studio apartment, Jesse Fink bought his daughter what she needed.Source:News Limited

Ambling through Kings Cross to the newsagent early one Sunday morning, an approaching raver off his face on booze and drugs was utterly affronted at the very sight of us.

“How dare you bring a kid to the Cross!” he spat.

“Mate, unlike you, this is where I live.”

Rather than suffering for the divorce over those intervening eight years, my girl, now 12 and taller than her mother, has benefited greatly from the life change, just as I have. I’m in a new relationship and so is my ex-wife. We’re both happier. Our daughter is better off.

Any separated couple that thinks they’re jeopardising the welfare of their child or children by filing for divorce is wrong. What matters is how much love you both have to give and how much your kids know you love them. Everything else takes care of itself. It’s better for two parents of a child to be happy apart than miserable together.

Our daughter has become more independent, self-reliant, empathetic and compassionate. She’s not afraid of new situations or new faces. She’s inquisitive, curious and, above all else, sharp as a tack. No school can teach you street smarts, but a broken home can.

That little strawberry-blonde girl in the pink fairy wings with the magic wand is going to grow up to become a formidable woman. I couldn’t be more proud of her.

There is no right way to parent a child after a divorce. You deal with the situation you’re in and you give it all you’ve got. Not every weekend is going to be the greatest. Not every school lunch is going to be worthy of Rosemary Stanton. You will occasionally swear in front of your child. You will let them stay up way past their bedtime. But as long as there is always love in your home, no matter how small that home may be, there is no struggle or challenge you and your child cannot overcome.

Life eventually gets better. Romantic love can bloom again; your new partner even benefits from all those mistakes you made the first time around. You’re not about to make them again.

I do recognise that my ex-wife is a good mother to my child. Like me, she is doing her best. Our own parents, my daughter’s grandparents, have been amazingly supportive.

I used to think I had betrayed my daughter’s future for failing to keep her family intact. Now I realise she got more of the biggest gift I could give her: my heart.